Features

Vindral distributes streams with ultra-low latency and perfect sync to viewers across various platforms. From desktop browsers, mobile devices, to native apps, Chromecast, Apple TV, TV apps, and more, Vindral ensures a coherent, high-quality viewer experience.

Vindral is available both as a service and as a white-label solution for organizations looking to build their own streaming service or application.

Vindral supports up to 4K video streams and utilizes highly efficient ASICs and GPUs for high-performance, environmentally-friendly transcoding.

Supercharged and future-ready.

Don’t take our word for it – take a spin yourself. Watch our live demos or get in touch.

the sweet spot

Viewer expectations are challenging. From games and video-on-demand, viewers expect high quality and a smooth user experience.

Low latency solutions struggle with quality. High-quality solutions struggle with sync and latency.

Vindral is optimized to deliver high quality playout with exceptional resilience, all while maintaining ultra-low latency and synchronization among viewers.

This places Vindral in a sweet spot within the industry.

When compared to technologies such as WebRTC, Vindral provides superior video quality, fewer interruptions, and a more consistent viewer experience.

configurable latency

Latency is a critical factor in live streaming. It refers to the delay between the time a signal is sent and when it is received by the viewer. For any interactive application, latency is pivotal, as it can greatly impact the user’s experience.

At Vindral, viewers are kept on a known latency of your choice, which is guaranteed for all viewers, across devices. This means you have the flexibility to configure the latency to your needs, whether it’s 700ms glass-to-glass or around one second. The configurable buffer ensures that all viewers get the same experience.

Vindral’s most common configurations are set at sub-second glass-to-glass latency. This means that the delay between the source and the viewer is virtually imperceptible. Whether you are streaming live events, webinars, or delivering on-demand content, viewers will receive the experience intended, without any lag or delays.

Our SDK:s provides support for configuring a static latency which can be set on a per channel basis, per region/country, or based on other parameters relevant to your use case.

Find more information about our SDK:s at https://docs.vindral.com

quality enabling in-depth details

From live sports to remote inspections, audiovisual quality is more important than ever. Vindral enables crystal-clear experiences with unmatched stability, even for viewers on congested networks. Achieving quality retention, especially at 4K, marks a significant advantage over real-time solutions such as WebRTC. Vindral’s cutting-edge adaptive bitrate algorithm, together with the fully configurable buffer, provide unmatched resilience for live streams – unlocking 4K sub-second latency across the globe.

Compared to solutions based on WebRTC technology, Vindral provides a more resilient stream; with smoother playback and higher image quality. On non-perfect networks, such as mobile and WiFi networks, competing technologies struggle in terms of frame drops, freeze frames or suffer display artifacts. Below is a comparison video, from extensive – structured and automated – testing, for a leading WebRTC vendor.

synchronized playout

Playout sync is a crucial aspect of live video streaming, as it ensures that all viewers receive content simultaneously. With Vindral’s synchronized functionality, no viewers are left behind. Content reaches all viewers at the same time, no matter their device or location, yielding a seamless and coherent experience at a guaranteed latency.

Viewers are on the same latency, regardless of device
Maximum of 100 ms drift (HLS: 20-40 s, LL-HLS: 2-8 s)
Coupled with ABR the stream is retained even on weak markets and networks
Works with our ultra-fast channel switching, bringing cutting-edge experiences to the next level.
The system decides what is played out, not the viewer device.

Want to see it for yourself? Try our demo on multiple devices and set the buffer size the same for all devices.

competing technologies

WEBRTC

WebRTC, short for Web Real-Time Communication, is a streaming protocol built for teleconferencing over the public internet. The method was initially developed by Google and later released as open source. Since its initial release, WebRTC has been broadly endorsed, which has yielded steady growth in deployment.

The unique selling point of WebRTC is the exceedingly fast delivery, around 350ms glass-to-glass, which is mainly relevant in video conferencing. Current WebRTC implementations are known to be expensive. Vindral provides, in comparison, more bang for the buck. Furthermore, at latencies of a few hundred milliseconds, WebRTC struggles with upholding video quality – approaching 4K in a real-time live stream typically yields quality degradation, buffering or frame drops. It is particularly challenging in use cases where the geographical spread between viewers is large, or when network conditions fluctuate. WebRTC often requires, even for HD video quality (720p), near optimal conditions to uphold a robust delivery. Furthermore, as video quality demands and viewer expectations increase, the challenges of WebRTC implementations will become increasingly more apparent.

FOCUS ON LOW LATENCY

EXPENSIVE IMPLEMENTATIONS

STRUGGLES TO uphold QUALITY

LL-HLS

HLS is the most widespread protocol in live streaming today. Initially, the HTTP live streaming protocol, HLS, was developed and launched by Apple. The core of the protocol is all about stability – effectively sustaining high video qualities, including 4K. Moreover, as HLS supports adaptive bitrate, streams automatically adapt to and deliver the highest possible quality in relation to the bandwidth of the receiving viewers. However, a one-sided focus on stability means latency is sacrificed.

Low latency HLS, or LL-HLS, was introduced as an attempt to mitigate this imbalance, bringing the latency down to the range of 2-8 seconds.

Both HLS and LL-HLS are inherently unsynchronized technologies, rendering them unsuitable for certain interactive scenarios with multi-platform delivery. Even though the introduction of LL-HLS reduced latency – it is not low enough for live interactivity; in sports betting, users want to be able to place their bets as close to the action as possible. The same goes for live casinos, in which the interaction between the players and the dealer is further emphasized. In live events, interactivity between the audience and speaker is of the absolute essence. A latency of 2-8 seconds does not do the trick.

FOCUS ON STABILITY

UNSYNCHRONIZED

SACRIFICES LATENCY FOR STABILITY

COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW

SOLUTION	INITIAL PURPOSE	LATENCY	4K SUPPORT	4K SCALABILITY	PLAYOUT SYNC	LAUNCH YEAR
Vindral	Broadcast	500 ms	Yes	Yes	Yes	2016
LL-HLS	Broadcast	~2-8 s	Yes	Yes	No	2019
WebRTC	Teleconferencing	250 ms	Yes, but not sustained. Rarely under real-life conditions.	Likely in theory, none of current implementations are scalable.	Yes	2011*

* 1.0 Stable Release May 4th, 2018

RETAINED QUALITY. GUARANTEED LATENCY.

And no unwanted surprises. Blurry video, lag, and viewers falling behind make live streaming cluttered and messy. Poor live streaming experiences are not only frustrating but influence brands’ ability to uphold high-quality recognition among their consumers. Powering a first-class presence, viewers can experience captivating moments exactly as they unfold, swiftly and in crisp quality.

72%

Expect latency issues when watching live streamed sports.

64%

Report buffering issues when watching live streams online.

51%

Abandon live streams after 2 or 3 instances of buffering.

72%

Expect latency issues when watching live streamed sports.

64%

Report buffering issues when watching live streams online.

51%

Abandon live streams after 2 or 3 instances of buffering.

EVALUATING PERFORMANCE

We claim to have unmatched performance – but don’t take our word for it. Testing the performance of any live-streaming solution is crucial before making a decision on what product to use. Whether you are interested in WebRTC, Vindral, LL-HLS, or some other solution, our guides on testing walk you through a few basic scenarios to evaluate performance.

a global live cdn

Vindral Live Streaming Service is available globally, ensuring accessibility in all regions. Core features across our service include ultra-low latency, playback synchronization, redundancy, and high availability.

Vindral utilizes global load balancers (GLBS) and redundant instances of all services, running on multiple ISP:s, networks, and multiple data centers. The global load balancer service built into the Vindral CDN automatically chooses the closest available data center with available egress capacity. Utilizing several major ISP:s and Cloud Providers, including Tata Communications, GCP, Azure, Clouvider, OVH, Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, and Oracle, Vindral is set for global scalability.

Moreover, using traffic rules, we can ensure your streams are protected based on the viewer’s location. As a result, all streams are GDPR compliant. At the core, Vindral is designed for automatic failover, traffic routing & optimization, and no single point of failure.

all benefits

Vindral is a full-featured live streaming system, available as a live CDN service or for deployment in your infrastructure. The following features and performance aspects are included.

VIEWER EXPECTATIONS

SYNCHRONIZED PLAYOUT

All viewers are kept on the same latency, yielding a fully synchronized playout experience.

high-quality video

Unlike other ultra-low latency solutions, Vindral maintains a high quality. 4K is supported at a second of latency.

ultra low latency (configurable)

Whether you need sub-second latency or increased resilience at two seconds, Vindral puts you in charge.

compatibility

Let your viewers choose their own platform. Streams work the same across the board – from apps, desktop and mobile browsers and smart TV platforms.

quick channel switching

For multi-channel applications, channel-changing times and transition behavior are crucial. The experience is kept smooth with optimized switching performance.

Adaptive bitrate

Vindral features multi-ABR transcoding which provides a viewer experience that adapts to the internet connection for each viewer. Using ABR, streams ranging from 4k 20Mbit/s down to 360p 0.2Mbit/s can be provided.

multi-camera delivery

Engage fans in more dimensions, adding multiple camera angles that leverage the synchronized playout to provide a deeply immersive product.

Adaptivity

To provide a coherent experience globally, Vindral adjusts seamlessly to network conditions. As viewers’ devices and connections, all differ, the system adapts to the given conditions.

for developers, by developers

API, SDK and code samples

Vindral’s API and SDK enable seamless interaction and usage in all settings. More on this at docs.vindral.com

native app support

Use the native SDKs to create iOS, iPadOS and Android native applications.

video-synchronized data channel

Interactive experiences are powered by our data channel, which allows dynamic events to be triggered with video-synchronized granularity.

zero plugins

Vindral runs without any plugins, making it smooth and seamless.

high quality content delivery

professional encoders

Support for ingress using professional encoders from Elemental, MediaExcel, Haivision, and others. Naturally, there’s also extensive support for Composer.

stream protection

All content is encrypted and transmitted in a secure way, keeping your content safe and monetizable.

gdpr compliant

Vindral only gathers performance metrics related to quality assurance and retains this data for a very limited amount of time. Data is stored securely, and both gathering and storage may be geographically restricted. Our clients with escalated compliance needs are using this functionality to keep their viewers’ metrics within the EU to adhere to GDPR, or whichever protection regulation is in force. In these cases, we also offer a DPA for further facilitation of compliance.

smooth operations and management

metrics

Performance and load are continuously monitored, providing insight into quality and user behavior.

analytics

Built-in analytics tool for studying traffic amount, device types, operating system types, countries, regions, streams and more.

oem ready

Vindral is built specifically to serve as a foundation for CDNs. Using our scripts and management tools, you get a fast track to deployment on your own infrastructure.

fully redundant

Redundant ingest sites, fail-over enabled transcoders, Global Load Balancing, multiple data centers, and multiple ISP providers.

all benefits

Vindral is a full-featured live streaming system, available as a live CDN service or for deployment in your infrastructure. The following features and performance aspects are included.